"I don't think of the distinction btwn readers & nonreaders—better, those who love reading & those who don't so much—in terms of class, which may be a function of my being a teacher of literature rather than a sociologist, but may also be a function of my knowledge that readers can be found at all social stations…much of the anxiety about American reading habits…arises from frustration at not being able to sustain a permanent expansion of "the reading class" beyond what may be its natural limits…

American universities are largely populated by people who don't fit either category [readers & extreme readers]—often really smart people for whom the prospect of several hours attending to words on pages (pages of a single text) is not attractive…

All this is to say that the idea that many teachers hold today, that one of the purposes of education is to teach students to love reading—or at least to appreciate & enjoy whole books—is largely alien to the history of education."

"2 questions parents & educators should ask about Levine's program. (1) Is his theory of how mind works correct? Theories of learning disabilities (including Levine's) are theories of what happens when learning abilities have gone wrong. If you mischaracterize abilities, your description of potential problems is inaccurate...Levine's broad-strokes account of the mind agrees with that of most researchers: there is a memory system, an attention system, & so on. But it's the detailed structure Levine claims to see w/in each of those systems that really drives his proposed treatments for disabled children, & on those details Levine is often wrong...second question...Does the evidence indicate that his proposed treatments help? The answer is that there is no evidence, positive or negative, as to whether or not the program helps kids. Given the inaccurate description of the mind on which it is based, however, it seems unlikely that it will prove particularly effective."